Subject: Re: IETF Trust Decision on "Legal Provisions for IETF Documents" (datedOctober 16, 2008)

From: "TS Glassey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:44:54 -0800

Yeah - there is a flaw in the logic. The issue is really tricky with
Standard's Document's who's precursor document's are all done under
different copyright and license agreement's as would be the case for a
process in the IETF which took several years to start and complete with all
the changes over the last couple of years in regard to the IPR.

Bluntly without a Hold-Harmless clause in this contract - I think the IETF 
and its lawyers are in for a world of hurt... but that's just my 2 cents.

Todd Glassey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ed Juskevicius" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Trustees" <[email-masked]>; "IETF Discussion" <[email-masked]>;
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 6:31 PM
Subject: IETF Trust Decision on "Legal Provisions for IETF Documents"
(datedOctober 16, 2008)

This message is an announce the IETF Trustees have reached consensus on
a policy entitled "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents".

The Trustees met via telechat during October to review all "last call"
comments on the draft policy, and to approve the Policy.  Thank you for
all of your inputs to our deliberations, and for your patience with
process.  We are done!

Attached to this message, please find a marked version of the final
policy document as it was reviewed by Trustees in October, and a clean
version of the approved Policy document (dated October 16th) with all
changes incorporated.

FYI, the approved Policy will become effective on the same day that the
RFC Editor publishes two new RFCs as follows:

  RFC 5377 (from draft-ietf-ipr-outbound-rights-07)
  RFC 5378 (from draft-ietf-ipr-3978-incoming-09

I understand that publication of both these RFCs is imminent.  As soon
as they are published, I will close the loop by sending one more e-mail
message on this subject, and by uploading the approved and adopted
Policy document to the IETF Trust webpage.

Best Regards,

Ed  Juskevicius, on behalf of the Trustees
[email-masked]

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---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:58:29 +0100

> a policy entitled "Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents".

Congratulations!  And thanks for posting the final documents.

To make sure we also archive the Code Components List, which is linked
from by the Legal Provisions, and make that available for easy reference
(via the mailing list archive) I retrieved the file today.  I used the
URL from the PDF you posted.  SHA-1 hash as below.

mocca:~$ wget -q http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt
jas@mocca:~$ sha1sum Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt
9dbc3bc95964c4f506630d2ff7e20ae02ccced2a  Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt
jas@mocca:~$

The Trustee's web pages links to another Code Components list from
<http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/>.  I'm including SHA-1 hash of
that file and attaches it as well.  The content appears to be the same,
but it uses different formatting.  It is not clear to me which is the
canonical source.

jas@mocca:~$ wget -q http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code-Components-List.txt
jas@mocca:~$ sha1sum Code-Components-List.txt
d48d740ce99a322c00e28865f4a76213b377caed  Code-Components-List.txt
jas@mocca:~$

/Simon
o ABNF definitions
o ASN.1 modules
o ASN.1 structures
o Management Information Base (MIB) modules
o TLS presentation syntax
o eXternal Data Representation (XDR)
o Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schemas
o XML DTDs
o XML RelaxNG definitions
o tables of values
o classical programming code

Examples of common Code Components which may be found in IETF Contributions and IETF Documents:

o ABNF definitions

o ASN.1 modules

o ASN.1 structures

o Management Information Base (MIB) modules

o TLS presentation syntax

o eXternal Data Representation (XDR)

o Extensible Markup Language (XML) Schemas

o XML DTDs

o XML RelaxNG definitions

o tables of values

o classical programming code

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:29:12 -0500

Simon,

As to the Code Components list.  The Policy document points to http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html 
  for the location of the List.

There is a link there labelled IETF Legal Provisions for IETF  
Documents & Code Components List pointing to: http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/

That has a link there labelled Examples of common Code Components  
which may be found in IETF Documents with a link to: http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code-Components-List.txt

I think you are suggesting that there should be an archive maintained  
of old Code Component lists.  If so, I agree.

I expect they would be accessible from Archive of Obsolete Policies  
and Procedures at  http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/

I think you are also suggesting we should post  
Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt and have it accessible from there.

Do I have this correct?

Ray

On Nov 12, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> o classical programming codeExamples of common Code Components which  
> may be found in IETF Contributions and IETF Documents:
>
>
> o ABNF definitions
>
> o ASN.1 modules
>
> o ASN.1 structures
>
> Trustees mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/trustees

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:53:08 -0500

Simon,

On Nov 14, 2008, at 4:26 AM, Simon Josefsson wrote:

> Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Simon,
>>
>> As to the Code Components list.  The Policy document points to
>> http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html
> Ray,
> The document you posted in this thread points to another URL:
>
> 4.     License to Code Components.
>
>       a.  Definition. IETF Contributions and IETF Documents often
>       include components intended to be directly processed by a
>       computer (“Code Components”). A list of common Code Components
>       can be found at
>       http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt .

This is not what I am seeing.  I get:
4. License to Code Components.
a. Definition. IETF Contributions and IETF Documents often include  
components
intended to be directly processed by a computer (“Code Components”). A  
list of common Code
Components can be found at http://trustee.ietf.org/policyandprocedures.html 
  .

>
>
> Generally, the PDF the Trustees agreed to (according to your initial
> post in this thread) is not the document that is currently available
> from http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/IETF-Trust-License-Policy.pdf

This is the current version.

>
>
> That PDF on the web site is attached below for archival.  For  
> reference
> it has this SHA-1 checksum:
>
> 2e2b1b5cf1a5b342c46be9b313ee6d054063a827  IETF-Trust-License- 
> Policy.pdf
>
> The changes between the two documents include:
>
> * Effective Date added
>
> * URL for code components changed
>
> * Copyright notices changed from:
>
>   Copyright (c) <YEAR>, IETF Trust and the persons identified as its
>   authors. All rights reserved.
>
> into
>
>
>   Copyright (c) [insert year] IETF Trust and the persons identified as
>   the document authors. All rights reserved.
>
> There may be other changes too, it is difficult to review changes
> between PDF documents.

It is true that those items were changed in the approved version.
>
>
> The copyright notice change appears unfortunate: not all IETF
> Contributions are documents.  This seems like a potentially  
> significant
> change.

This may be a valid point and needs some exploration.  Could you  
elaborate?

>
>
> Did all Trustees agree to make this change?  In other words: which
> document did the Trustees actually approve?
>
>
>> which may be found in IETF Documents with a link to:
>> http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code-Components-List.txt
>
> Using the term 'Examples' here is inappropriate.
>
> RFC 5377 has requested that the Trust maintain a list of RFC  
> components
> that will be considered code.  As far as I read RFC 5377, the list
> maintained by the Trust is normative at any single point of time, and
> the content of the list has legal implications.  It is not an "example
> list".

Good point.  We will review.

> My point was to publicly archive the code component list at the date  
> of
> publication.

Correct.
>
>
> However, I agree that publicly archiving old code component lists  
> too is
> useful.

OK
> No, here is what I suggest:
>
> 1) Make the content of
>   http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code-Components-List.txt be the content
>   of http://trustee.ietf.org/docs/Code_Components_List_8-12-08.txt.
>
>   This avoids the unfortunate use of the term 'Example' in the list
>   itself.

I see that.
>
>
>   The latter list is more appropriate for another reason: it was the
>   latter list that was approved by the Trustees according to your
>   initial post in this thread.

Could you point me to what you believe to be my initial post in this  
thread?
>
>
> 2) Change text 'Examples of common' into 'Common' on
>   http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/

Understood.
>
>
> 3) Decide which version of the document is the official one, and  
> please
>   also post the final document to this list.  The decision seems to be
>   which copyright notice to use: the one the trustees approved
>   (according to your post) or the one currently available from the
>   trustee.ietf.org site.
Understood.

Ray

> <IETF-Trust-License-Policy.pdf>

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:30:23 +0100

Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]> writes:

> Components can be found at

Ray, your initial post is available in the archive here:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg53563.html

Both attachments contains the text I quoted, and the e-mail says it was
the version of the document that was approved.

> It is true that those items were changed in the approved version.

The approved version (according to your e-mail) does not contain that
change, unless two versions of the documents were approved.

>> significant change.

Primarily:

The Trust should clarify which copyright notice it wants to use.  The
approved document from the mailing list archive above says it should be:

However the PDF available from trustee.ietf.org says:

Secondarily:

It happens that source code has another author than the RFC/I-D document
author.  The latter copyright notice will be incorrect in these cases.
This has legal implications as far as I understand.

The BSD license applies to Code Components in IETF Contributions, and
not all IETF Contributions are documents.

I admit that the majority of relevant origins for Code will be in
RFC/I-D's, but given that e-mail to IETF lists and other contributions
are counted as IETF Contribution, and thus their Code parts are covered
by the BSD license, it is confusing for the copyright notice to then
refer to a "document".

I believe the change to section 4 of the Trust License is sub-optimal
and was not discussed with the IETF community, at least as far as I am
aware.  The earlier draft versions did not contain this text, and the
draft Jorge sent me to review did not either.  I would have brought it
up if it was present at that time.

> Could you point me to what you believe to be my initial post in this

See above.

/Simon

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:26:13 +0100

Ray,

That PDF on the web site is attached below for archival.  For reference
it has this SHA-1 checksum:

2e2b1b5cf1a5b342c46be9b313ee6d054063a827  IETF-Trust-License-Policy.pdf

* Effective Date added

into

The copyright notice change appears unfortunate: not all IETF
Contributions are documents.  This seems like a potentially significant
change.

RFC 5377 has requested that the Trust maintain a list of RFC components
that will be considered code.  As far as I read RFC 5377, the list
maintained by the Trust is normative at any single point of time, and
the content of the list has legal implications.  It is not an "example
list".

> of old Code Component lists.  If so, I agree.

My point was to publicly archive the code component list at the date of
publication.

However, I agree that publicly archiving old code component lists too is
useful.

1) Make the content of

3) Decide which version of the document is the official one, and please
   also post the final document to this list.  The decision seems to be
   which copyright notice to use: the one the trustees approved
   (according to your post) or the one currently available from the
   trustee.ietf.org site.

/Simon